We're back in 8th Century China in this visually sumptuous if largely oblique martial arts saga from Hou Hsiao-Hsien and being a Hsiao-Hsien film you can be sure there's more 'art' than 'martial' on display. Hou's films are slow and gorgeous to look at and this is no exception. "The Assassin" of the title is female though her gender seems to me to be somewhat irrelevant as indeed is the film's impenetrable plot. It would appear Hou wants us to swoon over the images rather than pay attention to the murky storyline, (it might help if you read Xing Pei's short story first). In fact, this is just the kind of movie that the expression 'like watching paint dry' was created for. The few fight sequences we get are well choreographed but this is certainly not an 'action' picture while the characters remain at arm's lenght throughout. A difficult watch, to say the least.
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